Reclaiming beaches and looking around old hotels
Top weekend! On Saturday, we checked out several Solstice Parties before ending up near Waterloo for the superb Reclaim the Beach party. This takes place on the banks of the River Thames (underneath the Festival Hall) on the patch of sand when the tide is out. So, from midnight to 5am, up to a thousand revellers enjoyed the free party - drinking, dancing and relaxing on beach towels in the darkness. It was a fantastic night, and thankfully the police didn't bother trying to break up this highly illegal - but fun! - gathering of peaceful ravers. Miss the next one at your peril!
Next day, we checked out the truly breathtaking Midland Grand Hotel, in front of St Pancras railway station. Closed as a hotel since 1935, the building is an absolute marvel of High Victorian architecture, with its fading, crumbling glory adding to the mystery and melancholy of the place. Get there quick before it turns into yuppie flats!

Slightly lagered....
Well, it's been a long couple of days.
Yesterday I was working like mad trying to finish the oft-put-off writing job and then I went off to the Ruby Lounge in Waterloo to meet some chums before legging it to Marylebone to be a guest on the late night BBC London Sadie Nine Radio Show. They had a great picture of Daleks there. Daleks are cool. Did you know that they had a satellite dish on their backs? I didn't.

Today it was back to the writing and then up to Hammersmith for the launch of Tron2 - an impressive new video game based on the old 1982 film. I was given two rather odd-looking plastic dolls of the main male and female characters (not the funky bad guys unfortunately) which are now located in my loo (It's full of mad stuff. One day I'll get round to posting up some pics of it)

Then, armed with several quietly-secreted jelly vodkas, I met up with Em and went to see a band called Heist in Highbury and Islington.
And they were very good: sort of Pulp meets the Randall and Hopkirk theme tune

Things I have done today when I should be working on pressing writing deadline
1. Cleaned my keyboard thoroughly
2. Tidied up my office
3. Got out some fairy lights and thought about how they might look in my bedroom
4. Picked some weeds out of the flower pots on my balcony
5. Added new forums on my bulletin boards, and changed the order of them four times
6. Asked about installing mixer taps on a bath
7. Checked out three photography websites and read loads of info on the new Sony V1, Nikon and Canon G5 'prosumer' cameras.
8. Answered a load of non urgent emails
9. Bought the paper
10. Added this to my blog

Alcohol, celebration and work
Apologies for the delay in updating my blog. As you probably might have guessed, the mighty Cardiff City won the play off final and the celebrations were mpst beerful - check out the pics.
I've recently been obsessively updating the Brixton Then And Now section. Lining up the new pics with the old invariably involves running into the middle of a busy road and tryimg t capture the right angle before some ghastly 4x4-driving tosser tries to mow me down...